


And this the life I gave for you

by lunabee34 (Lorraine)



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Episode: s04e20 The Last Man, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-27
Updated: 2014-03-27
Packaged: 2018-01-17 04:04:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1373284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lorraine/pseuds/lunabee34
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pretty much the shippiest "their epic love lasts for 48000 years and defeats the space-time continuum" fic ever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And this the life I gave for you

Late at night while much of Atlantis sleeps, Rodney brings his laptop to the control room and works, one eye on the Gate. Watching for Sheppard.

Rodney wonders if Atlantis even exists 48,000 years into the future. He wonders if Sheppard will step from _now_ and into the choking blackness of space, into the terrible emptiness of the void. Rodney stops himself before he can imagine Sheppard’s blood freezing, his lungs imploding. After all, humans should be on their third or fourth evolution by the time Sheppard gets to where he’s going. The future Lanteans probably hop through the space-time continuum on kindergarten fieldtrips. Sheppard will be back as soon as he can, no doubt about that. 

The Gate activates and Rodney is struck by how much more beautiful the original Gates are than their Milky Way counterparts. Rodney knows the design differences are largely a result of the availability of building material, but he thinks that even if he knew nothing about the Goa’uld or the Ancients, he could still tell what kind of people they are from the Gates they constructed. The Ancients worked with the cool blues and silvers of the sea, of the sky, and these are beautiful colors, yes, but so cold and so detached. The Goa’uld, not surprisingly, adorned their Gates with bronze, with the warm and vital reds of the blood they spilled. 

The wormhole stabilizes and Chuck lowers the shield. He doesn’t announce an IDC and Rodney realizes Chuck has forgotten he’s not alone in the control room. Rodney’s fingers still on the keyboard and for a split second he doesn’t breathe, but only Halling emerges. Rodney squares his chin and starts typing again. It’s only been two weeks, a mere fourteen days, and Sheppard always comes back.

Then they find Teyla’s body.

Her skin is so cold and hard when Rodney takes her hand in his own and Rodney can barely stand to touch her, but not doing so seems like a betrayal. He has touched Teyla many times—her forehead pressed to his, her knee slick with sweat pushing him into the gym mat, her grip tight on his elbow as they run to the Gate—and he will not deny himself this final benediction.

Behind him, Ronon makes a noise of utter despair that Rodney never ever wants to hear again and then Ronon loses all control, punching the wall and slinging debris and through it all making that terrible sound of grief. Lorne says something Rodney doesn’t understand over the noise and approaches Ronon with hands outstretched, palms open to the sky. Rodney gently lets go of Teyla’s hand and stands back for a moment, watching Ronon’s unrestrained destructive power, and then he picks up a long metal rod from the floor and throws it as hard as he can against the one remaining window. Lorne opens his mouth and closes it again without speaking before leaving the building entirely. Ronon comes to stand with Rodney then, shoulder to shoulder, and together he and Rodney demolish their teammate’s last prison. When there is nothing left to destroy, they pick up Teyla’s body and carry her through to Atlantis and Rodney doesn’t even notice the muscles he’s pulled until he tries to sleep that night.

“Anytime now,” Rodney says to his ceiling. “You can come back anytime now.”

Some woman Rodney doesn’t even know sings Teyla into the afterlife and they bury her in the scorched earth of Athos. Rodney likes to think of her working in death to make her home world habitable again. He and Ronon sit vigil at her grave for the three days Satedan custom dictates and even though they talk very little, Rodney has never been so grateful for Ronon’s presence.

“Ronon,” Rodney says as he’s dialing the DHD, “it’s just us now. We’re the only ones left, you and me, and I, I want you to know . . .”

Ronon claps Rodney on the shoulder and squeezes until he looks up. “I know. Me too, McKay.” 

After Teyla’s funeral, things change. They have to. Ronon joins Major Lindstrom’s team and Rodney spends most of his time on Atlantis; he can’t imagine going offworld on a regular basis with anyone other than Sheppard and Teyla and Ronon. Rodney doesn’t blame Ronon, not at all, but Rodney can’t move on like that. Not yet.

Sam waits much longer than Rodney thought she would to approach him. “Rodney, it’s time,” she says. Rodney doesn’t agree but he’s heard her tone of voice before and he knows there’s nothing he can say to convince her otherwise. “I know Sheppard and his family didn’t get along, but they deserve some closure, Rodney. Not this endless waiting.”

“His family!” Rodney wants to scream. “Those people weren’t his family!” But he holds his tongue. He nods and turns on his heel and pretends he doesn’t hear Sam calling his name. That night Rodney packs up Sheppard’s quarters, parceling out the things he wanted people on Atlantis to have. Ronon gets the poster of Johnny Cash and Cadman and Dr. Biro split Sheppard’s cache of candles and Rodney ends up with _War and Peace_. Page seventeen is dog-eared and Rodney opens the book there and runs his fingers over the words that Sheppard once read, wondering what Sheppard thought they meant. Rodney refuses to attend Sheppard’s funeral. Sheppard isn’t dead, just someplace out of time, and Rodney isn’t ready to give up yet.

Rodney always thought that being with Sheppard was something he would get around to eventually, like winning the Nobel or building a ZPM from scratch. It seemed inevitable to Rodney, not fated or destined or anything quite so melodramatic as that, but merely the logical extrapolation from available data. Rodney kissed Sheppard exactly once months ago on MX4-900 as part of that world’s harvest festival. Sheppard’s jaw scratched pleasantly alongside Rodney’s and his lips were dry and chapped and he tasted like wine. Before he pulled away, Sheppard smiled against Rodney’s mouth like a promise for later and Rodney thought then that they had all the time in the galaxy. He still does. He can’t afford not to.

One day Ronon comes to Rodney’s lab and before he even opens his mouth, Rodney knows he’s leaving. “I can do more good on my own. Michael has to be stopped,” Ronon says.

“I know.” Rodney looks at the floor. “I just wish you didn’t have to go.”

“If you ever need me . . .”

Rodney waves his hands. “Yes, yes. Same here.” Ronon hugs him until Rodney can’t breathe anymore and when Ronon walks through the Atlantis Gate to MX7-398, it feels like putting Teyla in the ground all over again.

The Pegasus galaxy is crumbling around them—people dying left and right from the Hoffan drug, the Wraith that escape exposure to the toxin growing even more vicious in their bid for survival, and Michael turning every person he can into a monster and executing those he can’t. Rodney feels as if all the optimism and wonder that Atlantis once afforded has been leached away.

Fortunately, Sam doesn’t agree with him. She lobbies the IOA for resources with far more patience than Rodney knows he will ever possess and then Rodney throws himself into the task of making the Phoenix battle-ready. She is beautiful, this ship, because she is truly and wholly theirs—Rodney and Radek and Sam’s fingerprints on the very bones of her—and Rodney is too afraid to voice aloud his fragile hope that this one craft can make a difference. It’s just as well that he doesn’t because all too soon, Sam’s crew is Gating back to Atlantis under heavy fire and she isn’t with them.

Rodney makes the call. He doesn’t want to. God, does he not want to, but he makes the call anyway. Because he loved Sam, foolishly and obnoxiously and superficially in the beginning and fiercely and loyally and with his whole heart at the last. She was his friend and Rodney has had precious few of those in his life. 

“Dial Earth,” Rodney says and Chuck presses the buttons on the DHD. Rodney clears his throat as his IDC travels the millions of miles of space between him and Cheyenne Mountain. “General Landry, I have some bad news. I need to speak with SG-1.”

Ronon comes back to Atlantis for Sam’s memorial service. He has a new tattoo on his ankle and a new scar on his forearm and another over his ribs. He and Rodney stay up that night and drink Athosian wine in companionable silence until the moons fade from the sky. Later when he realizes that was the last time he saw Ronon alive, Rodney wishes he had said more, said anything at all, but he guesses Ronon’s always been good at knowing what people mean even when they are silent.

Radek offers to go with him to Athos but that doesn’t feel right to Rodney, so he keeps the three day vigil for Ronon alone. No one knows exactly what happened to Ronon and that lack of information bothers Rodney greatly. Clearly, he died in the explosion that destroyed Michael’s appropriated Wraith lab but what happened to him between the time Kilar last laid eyes on him and the blast is anyone’s guess. Several of Ronon’s men saw Todd in the facility but Rodney doesn’t know if the Wraith made it out of the lab before it blew. In the next seventy two hours of solitude, Rodney tells and retells himself the story of Ronon’s death until he finds a version he can cope with; over the years, he will forget that what he remembers is not necessarily what happened. 

It has taken him more than a year to get to this place, but finally, finally, Rodney stops wishing for Sheppard to step through the Gate and into all this death.

When Keller decides to leave, to wash her hands of the mockery the IOA has made of their expedition, Rodney is at first angry and then he is relieved. He discovers that he’s been waiting for someone else to make the first move, for someone to give him permission to go. 

“I’m sorry, Carson,” Rodney says through the clear Ancient polymer encasing the stasis pod. “I hate to leave you here like this, but I can’t stay anymore.” He puts his hand over Carson’s heart and holds it there until the polymer warms. “Woolsey promised me that the search for your cure will remain on the science team’s schedule of projects. I won’t let them forget you.” Rodney wipes his eyes on the hem of his shirt and tries very hard to not to think that if Carson ever wakes up, it will be to a room of people he’s never met.

“Are you ready?” Keller asks Rodney in the Gate room.

Rodney looks around the room—at the railing where Elizabeth once leaned, at the balcony that Sheppard tossed him over all those years ago, at the people (family) who have come to see them off—and nods. “Yes. I’m ready.”

At first Rodney thinks he’ll hole up in his quarters on the Daedalus for the entire journey, but Keller has different ideas. She won’t let him eat alone and she makes him laugh and one day Rodney finds himself standing with Keller in front of a viewport with his hands on her hips and his heart in his throat. Jennifer, now and for always Jennifer, kisses him. Her hair isn’t the warm blonde of Sam’s and her lips aren’t chapped like Sheppard’s were and her bones aren’t fragile in his grip like Katie’s. “Oh,” he thinks. “This isn’t what I expected at all.” And for the first time in many months, with Jennifer’s mouth moving wetly under his and the cold starshine on his face, for the first time in many months Rodney isn’t thinking 48,000 years into the future.

Earth is more beautiful than Rodney remembers—untouched by the Wraith or Michael and freer than any of its inhabitants can truly appreciate. He finds a job in two seconds flat and even if he has to dumb down his work by about a thousand degrees in order to keep the confidentiality clause of his contract with the SGC, Rodney still finds the work rewarding and interesting. Jennifer opens her own practice and every morning when she uncurls from Rodney’s embrace and heads for the office, Rodney falls back asleep immediately, assured that during the course of Jennifer’s work day she will not transform into a bug or contract a deadly plague or be held hostage for weapons.

“I got an email from Radek,” Rodney says one morning over breakfast. “They found partial blueprints for a ZPM in a lab on the west pier.”

Jennifer swallows a mouthful of granola. “That’s fantastic.”

“I don’t know why I even bother opening Radek’s emails. He’ll be impossible to live with now.” Rodney can hear the wistfulness in his voice.

“Because you can’t stand not knowing,” Jennifer says. “And because he’s your friend.” Jennifer scrapes the bottom of her bowl and then drops the spoon in with a satisfied clang. “Oh, I almost forgot. Jeannie, Caleb, and Madison are coming for a visit next week.”

“We are not eating tofu or rutabagas. Oh, or parsnips! No parsnips.”

Jennifer rolls her eyes. “Wouldn’t dream of it. Now get your ass moving, McKay. This money isn’t gonna spend itself.”

On the street in front of Williams Sonoma, Rodney sees a guy with Sheppard’s stupid hair and Rodney’s hand tightens reflexively around Jennifer’s. When the guy turns around it isn’t Sheppard. Of course it isn’t Sheppard and a wave of grief so strong he can barely stand hits Rodney square in the chest.

Jennifer looks at Rodney, at the man who is not and has never been John Sheppard, and back to Rodney again. “Rodney,” she says, and her voice is soft and gentle. “Rodney, it’s okay to still miss him.”

Rodney presses the heel of his hand into his eye until he sees stars and then he chokes out, “No. No, it’s not. It’s not okay. I have so much good in my life and I shouldn’t . . . it’s not okay.”

“Rodney,” Jennifer says. “I never thought I was the first person you ever loved.” And right there in the middle of North 25th, with the Sunday crowd weaving around them, Rodney hides his face in the hollow of Jennifer’s neck and sobs. When Jennifer is dying, Rodney remembers this moment often and wonders what he did to deserve such a hell of woman.

Radek comes to her funeral and so do Miko and Parrish and Smith and Lindstrom. O’Neill is there and Dr. Lam and Landry and what’s left of SG-1. Rodney is surprised and touched.

“You can come back to Atlantis,” Radek says before he beams up to the Daedalus. “You can always come back.”

Rodney says, “I know. But there’s something here I have to finish.”

At first Jeannie humors him. They argue over the equations and the general design and the overall wisdom of the plan. Jeannie is more okay with the concept of changing the course of events than Rodney had anticipated; her reservations lean more towards somehow inadvertently making things worse.

“Worse? How could things possibly be any worse than they are now?”

Jeannie frowns at him. “You’d be surprised, Mer.”

Months later when she has flown in on the redeye because Rodney hasn’t answered his phone for weeks, Jeannie stands in Rodney’s doorway and looks at the pizza boxes stacked on the coffee table, the unwashed coffee mugs that line the bookshelves, the rumpled clothes Rodney has worn for days. “This is what I meant,” she said. Rodney won’t stop what he’s doing, but he won’t let his sister leave angry either and before she goes, he promises to visit her soon and to eat something other than Folgers and to get fifteen minutes of sunshine every day.

Rodney quits SpaceTech and starts looking at community colleges. It galls him to ask Radek for a reference letter, but when Rodney opens the email and reads what Radek wrote about him-- _without a doubt the most intelligent man I have ever had the privilege to work with. I say with absolute certainty that Northeast Junior College has never entertained an applicant of Rodney McKay’s caliber_ \--he has to swallow around the sudden lump in his throat. 

Teaching is more difficult than Rodney imagined. Most of his students are unbelievably stupid and even the ones who don’t have their heads in their asses aren’t necessarily gifted in the sciences. Rodney goes for semesters at a time without knowing if he has made an impact on a single student. Twice in as many decades, Rodney comes across a student so gifted that he passes her name along to the SGC. Rodney never bothers to find out what happens to either of them.

He develops the reputation of a crotchety old hermit which doesn’t prevent his students from hitting on him and generally making his life miserable. “I’ve got to pass this class, Dr. Mac. I’ll do anything,” they say. Or “We’re all going out for drinks after the final and you should show,” or “Do you know who my father is? If you don’t change my grade, I’ll sue.” Rodney ignores them all, just as he ignores the department secretary’s standing invite for lunch and Dr. Hill’s repeated requests for him to serve on the faculty senate.

One night, Rodney stands in front of his whiteboard in his boxers. His fingers are stained green and black with dry erase marker and his nails are bitten to the quick and he is finally ready to go back to Atlantis. Fortunately, Rodney knows just the man to see.

Rodney is proud in a way Lorne probably wouldn’t believe that one of _them_ is sitting in that chair. Lorne wasn’t a member of the original expedition, but he loves Atlantis just as much as any of the first wave and as far as Rodney can tell, Lorne has tried his very best to do right by her.

“What can I do for you, Doc?” Lorne says and for the briefest instant Rodney feels the last twenty five years evaporate until they are both sitting in the conference room with the light through stained glass coloring their young faces blue and if Rodney just turns his head he will see Sheppard slouching back in his chair and trying not to yawn. 

Rodney shakes his head to clear it. “I have a proposal for you.”

In the end, Lorne agrees like Rodney knew he would, and not because he thinks Rodney can actually make it work but because Lorne was the last person who mattered who saw either John or Teyla alive. Because Lorne never could look Ronon square in the eye again after their funerals. Because, and even though Rodney knows Lorne is wrong on this score, Lorne never stopped blaming himself for Teyla’s death.

It takes Rodney and Radek a week to build the independent core that will house Rodney’s hologram and another three days to tweak the code. They hit a snag integrating safety and priority protocols into all of Atlantis’s systems so that no matter what parts of Atlantis may be destroyed in the future Rodney’s program will still be salvageable, but together they work it out. Finally, Radek writes the last line of code and Rodney keys execute and the labor of the last twenty five years of Rodney’s life uploads successfully into the core they built.

Rodney realizes he vaguely expected to keel over dead when this was through, when he was finally done, but of course he doesn’t. He’s only sixty eight and not anywhere close to knocking on death’s door, and for the first time in many, many years, Rodney is utterly lost. “What do I do now, Radek? I don’t know what to do.” 

“Perhaps live again, my friend.” 

“I don’t think I know how to do that anymore.” 

“Then I will show you.” Radek takes him by the hand and leads him to a transporter and they drink coffee on a balcony from mugs that say TALK NERDY TO ME while the sun breaks over Atlantis’s spires. If he closes his eyes, Rodney can see them all so clearly—Teyla with one hand on the ripe curve of her belly, Ronon with his head thrown back braying that godawful laugh, Sam elbow deep in circuitry with her braid slung over one shoulder, Jennifer with her beautiful face upturned to the stars, and Sheppard. When Rodney closes his eyes, he sees Sheppard. Rodney will never know if his plan works, if his decades-long obsession will make the slightest difference. Even if this past unravels and remakes itself into something better, for Rodney nothing will change and if his face is wet with tears, Radek is too polite to mention.

@@@

Rodney has no real reason to be in the control room but he can work just as easily from there on some projects as he can in the lab, and in any case Sam hasn’t called him on his lurking yet. She’s doing a little bit of lurking herself; all of them are, just waiting for Sheppard to show.

“Incoming wormhole,” Chuck says and then the Gate fills with ethereal blue light. “Receiving IDC. It’s Colonel Sheppard!”

“Lower the shield,” Sam says and then Sheppard steps through the Gate, the event horizon dissolving behind him like a halo.

“Oh,” Rodney thinks. “There you are. I've been expecting you.”


End file.
